Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to personal safety and, in particular, to informing first responders based on incident detection, and automatic reporting of individual location and equipment state.
Description of the Related Art
Worldwide there are around 350,000 workplace fatalities and 270 million workplace injuries annually. According to the National Safety Council, in the U.S. alone, this results in $750 billion in lost wages and productivity, medical expenses, administrative costs, motor vehicle damage, employer's uninsured costs and fire loss. This includes about 4,400 worker deaths due to job injuries, close to 50,000 deaths due to work-related injuries, and approximately 4 million workers who suffered non-fatal work related injuries or illnesses. An estimated 14 million people worked in the U.S. manufacturing sector in 2010, and there were 329 deaths due to job injuries, with $1.4 million in costs associated with each death, and 127,140 non-fatal injuries involving days away from work. In 2008, contact with objects and equipment was the leading cause of death (resulting in 116 deaths) and the leading cause of non-fatal injuries involving days away from work (60,430 cases) in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Overexertion is the second leading cause of non-fatal injuries involving days away from work.
However, first responders arriving at accident scenes are ill-informed as to the location of individuals and the state of workplace equipment. As such, there is a need for informing first responders based on incident detection, and automatically reporting the location of individuals and the state of workplace equipment.